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Thursday, September 2, 2010

Boozy Chocolate Cake

OK! Now I know this sounds bit strange but after you read the whole story you will know how I ended up doing this experiment. My better half was out of country for couple of weeks. I was alone at home and honestly didn't have any drive or interest to cook for me only. You see, I am known for my laziness and specially when the king is away from the castle, the whole administration becomes quite relaxed (a bit too much relaxed!!). Throughout week I had lived on minimum cooking. To begin with, heating up the leftovers but how long can leftovers remain? Once they are over then I turned on to heating stuff on oven and microwave. Somehow I reached the end of the week and on Friday, I reached my limit of having frozen food so I decided to cook something. I cooked some spaghetti in white sauce with mushrooms and peas and opened a bottle of red wine.

While having my dinner I was reading about how difficult it is to match a wine with chocolate and as a result started craving for a piece of cake. It was quite late to go to supermarket, so the only option I had is to bake it myself. I started the process and then I thought why not bake a chocolate cake with red wine. Quite a lot of wine was left in the bottle and this was just the excuse I was looking for to do my experiment. I found a recipe online, but I find it difficult to stick to recipes so mid way in the process of baking the cake I thought let me add some whiskey as well. It's going to boozy cake anyway why not make it a cocktail one. So I used some single malt whiskey from my husband's collection. Later on when I told him that I used some of his treasures in baking the cake, he was shocked and gave me a blank look and to his surprise there was a glittering spark of revenge in my eyes.

For soaking: (Yes, you need to soak the cake, which keeps the cake moist for a long time)

1 cup of water2 tbsp sugar1 glass of red wine

Method:

In a bowl mix all the dry ingredients together and keep it aside. Melt the butter and add the sugar to it and start whisking. Break the eggs and add them to the butter and sugar mix and whisk them until pale in colour. Melt the chocolate and add that to the egg-sugar-butter mix. Continue whisking while adding the glass of wine in to it. Now add the dry ingredient mix in the whisked mixture and as usual continue mixing (use a electric one). When it has become a homogeneous mixture, add the whiskey and the nuts and mix with a spatula. Preheat oven to 170°C and grease the baking tin. Pour the mixture in to the baking tin and bake it in the oven for 35 minutes until well risen. Insert a skewer in to the centre of the cake to check if it is cooked. If it comes out clean then your cake is ready. Once cooked, let it cool down for half-an-hour or so, then take out from the baking tin.

Now comes the soaking bit. Bring water and sugar to the boil in a small pan and add the red wine to it. Place cooled cake back in tin and pour the red wine syrup in to it. Once the liquid has been absorbed, store it in the fridge at least for few hours (ideally overnight). Don't try to cut a piece out immediately after soaking, I learnt this because I did and it broke into pieces as it was too moist. Later on you can take the cake out of the tin carefully and serve cold.

Note: This was a pure experiment with some unconventional ingredients for a cake but I enjoyed it. Hope you will also like it!!